It might well have been true; for now, as the child sat down beside a
small white stone, which evidently marked a child's grave, she gave a
low call, and in a moment a gray squirrel came running from the stone
wall (he had been sitting there, watching her with his bright black
eyes, looking so like a bit of the wall itself that the sharpest eyes
would hardly have noticed him), and leaped into her lap.

"Brother Gray-frock, how do you do?" cried the child, joyously,
caressing the pretty creature with light touches. "I wondered if I
should see you to-day, brother. The last time I came you were off
hunting somewhere, and I called and called, but no gray brother came.
How is the wife, and the children, and how is the stout young man?"

The "stout young man" lay buried at the farther end of the ground,
under the tree in which the squirrel lived. The inscription on his
tombstone was a perpetual amusement to Melody, and she could not help
feeling as if the squirrel must know that it was funny too, though
they had never exchanged remarks about it. This was the inscription:

"I was a stout young man
As you would find in ten;
And when on this I think,
I take in hand my pen
And write it plainly out,
That all the world may see
How I was cut down like
A blossom from a tree.
The Lord rest my soul."

The young man's name was Faithful Parker. Melody liked him well